Eric Holcomb leaves Monday for his first international economic development trip as governor. He’ll spend 10 days in Hungary and France, hoping to shore up global ties for Indiana’s top-earning manufacturing and automotive industries.

Indiana is already a center of investment for countries that include Japan and Germany. But the Indiana Economic Development Corporation says the Hoosier State will be the first to create what it calls a “formal framework with Hungary” to promote business and trade development.

A Purdue University economist says he doesn’t think Indiana will feel much of an impact after voters in the United Kingdom elected to leave the European Union.

Jerry Lynch is a former interim dean of Purdue’s Krannert School of Management and says the state and its businesses will have to take a wait-and-see approach.

“It’s not going to be dire," Lynch says. "It has the potential, depending on the kind of agreements that get negotiated, of slowing down world growth in the economy. And if world growth slows down, Indiana is affected by it, there’s no question at all.”

Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN) says the Export-Import Bank, which provides financing to help companies ship products overseas, is critical to the health of the U-S economy. But he says he’s fearful a group of what he calls “ideologues” will prevent its reauthorization in Congress.

Opponents of the Export-Import Bank, including Tea Party Republicans and conservative groups such as Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, decry it as corporate welfare. They says it’s a gift of taxpayer dollars to bolster big companies.

Three weeks after the Senate fought its way to approval of fast-track trade authority, the bill is in an even tougher battle in the House.

The House could vote as early as this week on the bill allowing the White House to send the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Congress for an up-or-down vote, without amendments. The deal has scrambled Washington‘s usual divisions, with most Republicans backing President Obama, and Democrats leading the effort to defeat the bill.

Indiana Senator Dan Coats predicts the Senate will approve fast-track trade authority this week for a Pacific Rim trade deal, but says getting there may be a tough slog. Several Democrats are defying President Obama to try to block fast-track, which would allow the administration to begin final negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and let the eventual deal come to the floor without amendments.